


Dream and Day United

by Likimeya



Category: Eagle of the Ninth Series - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-18
Updated: 2010-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 04:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likimeya/pseuds/Likimeya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Esca between his gladiatorial fight and his acquisition by Marcus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dream and Day United

**Author's Note:**

> We know Marcus' thoughts and feelings about Esca's near-death experience in the arena and when he buys him the next day, at least as far as he knows them himself… But Esca's willingness, eagerness even, to accept his new situation as a personal servant, I thought, needed a bit of explaining.

Esca groaned with frustration. He had been locked into his miserable mould-infested cell in the gladiator barracks and left alone to lick his wounds and worry about the future. For once he was glad about the isolation and the darkness. More people than he cared for had already witnessed his shameful fear and humiliation. He could not hide from himself and his own self-contempt, however, and left alone to relive the day's events and wallow in misery, he was swept away by a rolling wave of it. For, to his own exasperation, while he had so many good reasons to worry and be angry, all he could think about was a pair of brown italic conqueror's eyes. And no amount of groaning and banging his fist against the wall could change that.  
The image of those eyes was fixed in his memory and he could not shake off that odd, preternatural feeling of connection, as if a link had been formed the moment their gazes had met across the sand of the arena. As a result, Esca seemed unable to draw his mind away from those eyes – and that although he did not even like the man. He had to play the god-sent saviour! He couldn't just have let Esca die with his dignity at least partly intact. No, he had to make a great show of his compassion. He had to make the bloodthirsty Roman crowd, who were the reason why he had been fighting a mountain of muscles with a fishing net in the first place, bestow their generous mercy on the little slave in the dust. How very kind of him to let him live with the knowledge of that!

And yet – he did have soft and beautiful and extraordinary eyes. Brown and warm like sweet chestnuts on a winter night. They raised the hair on his arms and made his stomach flutter like that of a maiden's on the eve of her wedding day, and he found himself suddenly hoping that he had not seen the last of this strange enemy.  
Esca snorted in the dark. What thoughts for a warrior and the spear bearer of his father! They fitted the shame he had brought on himself in the arena. Was this what a few months of slavery had reduced him to: a fawning idiot ready to lick the feet – and probably more – of any master who condescended on a whim to let him keep his bare life?

Furious and miserable, Esca rolled himself in on his hard straw mattress hoping he would not have to wait long for sleep to bless him with forgetfulness. But it was a long time before he found a position for his sore and bruised body that was comfortable enough for sleep to consent to come at last. And there was no oblivion to be had that night. Even dreaming he found reason to be annoyed with his obstinate self.  
He dreamt himself back into the arena and relived the fight. But this time it was not as horrible as before, because, embarrassing as he found it even while dreaming, the prospect of meeting the young Roman and his eyes at the end of it made it more bearable.  
It ended in a different way than the real events that morning. In his dream, the Roman did not turn away after he had saved his life, but climbed down into the sand to him while Esca stood up and dusted himself off. Everybody else was suddenly gone, in dream-fashion. They were all alone in the arena, staring at each other, and all was silent. Finally Esca found his voice and asked, "Why did you do it?"

All of a sudden the quality of the dream changed. The world around him felt at once more real and more alien to Esca. It was dark like a thunderstorm at midday, and the air tingled on his skin. The man was still there before him, but his eyes were closed and instead of their warm glow, the light of a coldly burning crescent moon shone at Esca from the stranger's brow. It seemed to expand, or maybe he was falling into it, until it engulfed him in a blue-white light and he felt it bear his mind away as if to another level of dream realities.

He was a wolf in this new dream world. A wolf standing not in a wild wood, but in a garden, howling not at the moon, but at the lantern-lit glass panes in a window. It was Home, but the patterns that adorned the cornerstone were not the blue tribal symbols his great-grandfather had painted back in another age.  
The picture blurred before his eyes, and the vision changed. He was running wild now, through the hills and downs and marshes of his beloved country. Smelling the breeze from the near sea; feeling the harsh wind ruffle his fur. There were no mists today and the way was clear before him. And always by his side was the shadow of an eagle flying overhead along the same invisible but inescapable path, drawn by the same silent calling.

Then his perspective suddenly changed. Esca was taken out of the picture and reduced to a mere onlooker, seeing a version of this dreamland in which his wolfish self did not exist. The eagle was still flying in the sky, which now was the colour of lead. He was gliding low, as if weighed down by the metallic sky, and beating his tired wings only now and then to stay aloft. Looking closely at him for the first time, Esca saw that his feathers were of the deep death-at-midnight black of the raven. The eagle gave one forlorn cry, piercing the mists with a spear of loneliness that stabbed Esca' heart, then folded its wings and fell from the sky.  
Esca's hands twitched. He wanted to rush to the fallen bird's help, but he was rooted to his onlooker's spot. When he had blinked away the sting of helplessness in his eyes, somebody – something? – else had appeared in his stead. A figure shrouded in a cloak of darkness and stars, emanating power, vigour, life, and wearing a quaint pointy cap on his head incongruously like a king's fool's. He had scooped the eagle's broken little body up in his hands and was bent over it, and from his face onto it were dropping the tears that Esca felt running down his own cheeks. Suddenly the apparition looked up and directly at him, and its eyes were two blazing suns that burned a silent plea into him and left a dull yearning behind in his chest when they were suddenly blinked shut and all was darkness.

He slowly came to in what after a few confused moments he recognised as his own prison cell. Through the window high in the eastern wall he could see that the sky had the fresh rosy hue of a bright new day. It was already light inside, yet still the guard standing beside his door was carrying a torch in his hand. He was also, improbably, wearing the same curious hat the creature with the burning suns in his eyes had been sporting. But whereas the apparition's had been plain red, the guard's was adorned with a curious symbol. Esca blinked, shook his head, focused again and saw that it was the stitched picture of a dancing dolphin. While he was still staring, mystified, the guard turned his head toward him, looked him straight in the eyes, and winked.

He woke up with a start, this time for real.  
At least he thought so. The guard, who was in fact standing at the end of the corridor, carried no torch and had no cap on his head, pointy or otherwise, and he was picking his teeth in a rather bored fashion. It had indeed dawned, but the day was overcast and it smelled like rain. Esca fell back onto his mattress, dazed and sore, took a deep breath, and tried not to think at all.

* * *

It was a long day full of the horror of reliving yesterday's fear and humiliation, and of fretting about his bleak-looking and likely rather short future. At the end of it his dream, when he thought of it at all, seemed like nothing more than the silly tricks of an overstrained mind, which his imagination had at first been eager to confuse with a prophetic vision. Wishful thinking, nothing more. It took no great prophet to tell him what path his life was really going to go from here: into the blood-red sand of the arena, and that was the end of it.

In the evening, after endless idle hours of brooding and despairing, Esca was glad that he could still feel furious indignation when the barracks overseer came to let him out of the cell because, he told him, somebody had found the useless piece of scum that was him worth paying for – who could understand what was in a such a curly-ironed knight's head - and he was to be taken to the lucky new owner, and good riddance, too. Esca was torn between resentment at the unknown Romans' arrogance, that they thought they could buy him on a whim like a piece of furniture, and excitement at the prospect of a chance at escaping.

An old slave was waiting for him by the gate. He greeted Esca with a friendly open smile and handed him a woollen cloak. The night was chilly and Esca accepted it gratefully, not without noting that its dark green colour would be handy on his journey after he had escaped the old man. But then his eyes fell on the brooch at its neck and the figure depicted thereon, and his heart missed a beat and he froze in his place. It couldn't be! The servant noticed his consternation and explained, "The dolphin is your master the centurion's family crest. Hurry up now, it's cold, and I know somebody who's impatient to meet you!"

He knew then who was waiting at the end of the road the old man would lead him down; he also knew that he would not try to escape along the way there. He would have liked to be able to say that what made him feel breathless and light-hearted was the prospect of impending fulfilment of fate rather than desire. But he was honest enough with himself to admit it was the latter. Yet desire for what exactly did he feel? He did not even know to what end the centurion had purchased him and why he had caught his eye in the first place, and on that his judgement of the man must depend. He might be nothing more than a conceited knightling with a fancy for exotic playthings.

It seemed to take them a long time to reach their destination, but he was taken at last before his new master lying on his Roman bench. A pair of solemn brown eyes looked up into his own, and Esca heard the lonely cry of an eagle echo through his heart and knew that he was on a mission. He might not know what it was, but his heart was already in it, and that was enough.


End file.
